There's definitely something in the water in Queensland ...

(Above: the pond's mid-week guest)

And so we turn to a mid-week reading:

Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war? 
Mandrake: No. I don't think I do sir, no. 
Ripper: He said war was to important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Astonishing thoughts, a fiendish diabolical conspiracy, perhaps these days orchestrated by the UN, go on, General Jack Ripper, do tell us more:

Cut to: int. Ripper's office. Mandrake is sitting worriedly on a couch. 
Ripper puts a comforting arm around his shoulder. 
Ripper: through his cigar ... Mandrake ...
Mandrake: Yes, Jack? 
Ripper: Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water? 
Mandrake: Well, no I... I can't say I have, Jack. 
Ripper: Vodka. That's what they drink, isn't it? Never water? 
Mandrake: Well I... I believe that's what they drink, Jack. Yes. 
Ripper: On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason. 
Mandrake: Oh, ah, yes. I don't quite.. see what you're getting at, Jack. 
Ripper: Water. That's what I'm getting at. Water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, you realize that.. seventy percent of you is water. 
Mandrake: Uhhh God... 
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. Mandrake: Yes. chuckles nervously 
Ripper: You beginning to understand? Mandrake: Yes. chuckles. begins laughing/crying quietly Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol? 
Mandrake: Well it did occur to me, Jack, yes. 
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? 
Mandrake: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes. 
Ripper: Well do you now what it is? 
Mandrake: No. No, I don't know what it is. No. 
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? 
Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began? 
Mandrake: No. No, I don't, Jack. No. 
Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty six. Nineteen fortysix, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard core commie works. 

Oh the pond can never get enough of it, Stanley Kubrick's (and Terry Southern's) masterpiece, but if you think satire has a snowball's hope in hell of changing the world, lordy have we some Queenslander news for you.

General Jack Ripper allegedly finishes himself off in the bathroom in Dr. Strangelove, an allegedly surrealist absurdist farce making fun of humanity's infinite capacity for stupidity, but as it turns out, he survived the gun shot, and went into Queensland politics and became a roaring success preaching the very same message.

What an astonishing marvel the deep north is, and how bizarre its ways.

Ripper had to change his name of course, and seems to have settled on Jason Woodforth as a nom-de-plume:

Fluoride depletes iodine in the body, causing hyperthyroidism and immune deficiency. This is a scientific fact. It is a toxic waste - yet another fact. It is transported as a hazardous chemical. It is not natural at all. It comes from the toxic smoke stacks of industry. It is a neurotoxin - proven fact.

And so on and so forth, including There is not one piece of scientific data to prove the effectiveness or safety of fluoride, not one!

Now Paul Syvret was inclined to make light of this, and scribble The latest debate on fluoride in drinking water highlights the power of the internet to influence debate, proposing that the internet was the source of all sorts of wacky ideas (what a pity Gen Jack Ripper gazumped the intertubes).

But you can use the intertubes responsibly and sensibly to land on informative documents. You could for example browse the exhaustive (some might say exhausting) Systematic Review of the Efficacy and Safety of Fluoridation. You can find more links here, as well as the startling claim that fluoridation is both safe and effective.

You might reach the conclusion that fluoridation is in fact one of the more studied public health initiatives, and despite the conspiracy theories has a relatively clean bill of health. But not if you're from Queensland.

Let's apply Woodforth's thoughts to chlorine:

It is a toxic waste - yet another fact. It is transported as a hazardous chemical. It is not natural at all. It comes from the toxic smoke stacks of industry. It is a neurotoxin - proven fact. (And as a bonus) Chlorine gas was used in world war one as a weapon. Known fact. 

Yes, but how would you feel if you stepped into a poorly inadequately chlorinated hotel pool in Thailand and emerged with a tropical disease, and never mind a little skin and eye irritation, thereby confounding Australian doctors unused to the condition? Proven fact!

Perhaps even more interesting than the hysteria is the way that the state government has responded to the issue. The dominating point of view seems to be that everyone's entitled to their own special brand of bottled water stupidity (Queensland under fire over fluoridation).

One member of the government, a former dentist, even proposed that it was because the party was a broad church, unlike the heathen Laborites, that it could embrace diverse views.

But what's the point of a broad church if it welcomes loons and gives them a say in public health policy? To the detriment of public health ...

What happens when Campbell Newman delegates responsibility to councils, when surely the state of the state's teeth is a state issue? With due respect to the third pillar, it's full of wacky zany weirdos who can't make it to the state level, or don't want to, because the best real estate deals are done at council level.

Did councils ever recover from Rats in the Ranks, surely one of the best documentaries ever made in Australia?

But it's worse than just a council or state government folly.

Should anyone ever devise a proper federal dental health scheme, it becomes a federal issue, with the rest of Australia being forced to pay more to address the stupidity of cavity-riddled Queenslanders ...

It turns out that Newman isn't the messiah, and he's worse than a naughty, irresponsible boy.

He simply can't hold his festering majority together and govern in a sensible way, as noted in From Can Do to can't hold it together: Newman's struggle.

And suddenly according to a QT online poll, Ipswich residents are calling for fluoride to be dropped from their water supply (Fluoride furore: 68% say we don't want it). Admittedly the poll was about as scientific as Woodforth's theories, but you catch the drift. Promote the fear, and people will be fearful ... and cavity stricken (yes the pond grew up with a fluoride free water supply and has the cavities to prove it). And suddenly the City's fluoride debate is back on.

The federal government sounded like it didn't know how to respond to this tea party madness and the Courier-Mail took to editorialising the bleeding obvious (Editorial: Case for fluoride overwhelming).

...Before the Bligh Government introduced fluoride to drinking water in 2008, Queensland suffered the worst dental health of any Australian state, and worse than some developing countries. It was a health issue that Queensland could no longer ignore. 
 Politicians from both sides agreed and, since its introduction, fluoridated water has enjoyed bipartisan political support. It's also long boasted wide community favour. In 2005, a Sunday Mail opinion poll found 58 per cent of Queenslanders in favour, and jut 25 per cent opposed. By 2007, support had grown to 67 per cent.

First do no harm should be the mantra of any sensible politician, but it seems Newman has flipped that to "first let's wash our hands of anything too hard, and let others do harm if they want to."

So now the member of Nudgee (yes, it's Queensland) has gained traction, and Campbell Newman has revealed himself as a wimp of the first water. Oh how the Courier-Mail raged:

The fluoridation argument is a symptom of a growing phenomenon that sees fringe-dwelling and scientifically ungrounded opinions gaining a volume that threatens to drown out qualified experts. The debate over the vaccination of children is another example where a few anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists attract attention in the face of overwhelming evidence that vaccinations save lives.

Speaking of fringe dwelling theories, that gives us just time to check in on the Federal Opposition, and climate science, thanks to Lenore Taylor's Sceptics cool on climate studies.

She got them all together - Cory Bernardi, Barnaby "barn door gale flapper" Joyce, Dennis Jensen, David Bushby, and the socialist absurdity of Dr. Positive's "Direct Action" plan to piss billions down the pockets of business in the cause of reduced emissions and "practical environmental benefits", which looks like ensuring that the pink batts routine was just a blip up against truly wasted and wasteful expenditure.

Yes, this is the mob that will shortly, barring the odds, be in power with a relatively comfortable majority.

Including David Bushby, who surely must win the "slur of the week" award:

''I know eminent scientists have one view but I know other eminent scientists - usually ones who have retired and are no longer reliant on government grants - have a totally different view,'' he said.

Yep, that from a man who scores a comfortable government grant - let's call it a Senator's salary - to make absolutely stupid and insulting pronouncements.

For what it's worth, the pond on its recent trip to America picked up a non-fluoride toothpaste, made out of an ingredient of chocolate. The pond has yet to find a convincing scientific study for the stuff - it's been out for nearly a year on the marketplace - and it doesn't taste like chocolate, having been given a white crystal mint taste. It also tastes bad ... bad enough to find favour with a Queensland politician ...

But the United States is full of millions of General Jack Rippers and conspiracy theorists, and they're all eager to get chemicals out of their lives. Except when it comes to all the crap they buy from supermarkets ...

And now it seems we can breathe a sigh of relief, because Queensland is full of General Jack Rippers, and so is the federal opposition, and science is on the run, and the commentariat is there to cheer on the mayhem and the absolute folly ...

Just as a handy example, what do we find Janet Albrechtsen ranting about today?

Lefty insiders keep Aunty locked into groupthink (behind the paywall so you can avoid forming a prejudice about women).

Would that be the same group think that saw Albrechtsen side with Lord Monckton when it came to the UN orchestrating a climate science conspiracy so it could arrange for world government?

How tiresome, how tiring, how utterly tedious a querulous quarrelsome petulant and whining Dame Slap can be ...

And worse still, it seems now she might be turning up on the ABC, while reviling the institution all the while.

If she disdains the place so much, why doesn't she take a seat on the Channel 7 or 9 breakfast show. Or perhaps host Channel 10's since there seems to be a vacancy. Or there's always the spiffing current affairs offered by the commercial networks ...

And why not a rant about the anti-science madness rampant in Queensland?

In your dreams ... Chairman Rupert provides his platform for a raging full house of ratbag members of the commentariat so Campbell Newman and his government can roam wild and free, while the ABC and climate science are under permanent assault ...

And you'll only find corrections to Graham "the environment is in jolly spiffing shape and let a thousand flowers bloom out of the wonderful reefs" Lloyd's recent piecein the lizard Oz locked away behind the Crikey paywall under the header Fact check: coral reefs will not 'bloom' under climate change.

Which leaves the pond only one recourse. To provide the honourable members with honourable advice in relation to what they might experience if they use their members:

Mandrake: Jack... Jack, listen, tell me, ah... when did you first become, well, develop this theory. Ripper: Well, I ah, I ... I ... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love. Mandrake: sighs fearfully 
Ripper: Yes a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly: loss of essence. 
Mandrake: Yes... 
Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women... women sense my 
power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence. 
Mandrake: Heh heh... yes.

Oh if only wacky crazy politicians would deny women their essence, and in a few short cycles, we might have a new breed who take science seriously ...

(Below: the pond's clear scientific proof that there's something in the water in Queensland).